I figured out why 3rd parties hesitate to put their best teams on Wii games

[Ail]

RolStoppable said:

More than two years have passed since the Wii became a success story, but the best development teams of third parties are still working nearly exclusively on HD games. There are a few exceptions (like Monster Hunter Tri, Tales of Ten and Dragon Quest X) or developers who simply can't afford to make games for the 360 and PS3.

Now that most third parties have problems to generate profits despite record revenues ever since this generation started, the question is why are they still investing so heavily into HD games development instead of making two (or even three) quality games for the Wii with the money and manpower needed for a single 360/PS3 project? Not only would this mean that they can put out more quality games in the same timeframe, it would also reduce the financial risk, because for one, a Wii game is cheaper to develop and two, the risk is spread among more titles.

The reason why the majority of first string developers isn't working on Wii games is that a large part of the videogame industry has lost its focus, i.e. developers are making games for each other rather than the customer. The trend in this industry has been to make games to show off and pat each other on the back. It's more about prestige than business.

It seems like the people in charge are living in a bubble without realizing it. It appears that they see gaming journalists as people from the outside world (anyone noticed how many publishers started to talk about their metacritic scores as if they actually meant something), while in fact those are caught in the same bubble which explains why so many of them are confused that all these awesome HD games fail to make the 360 and PS3 outsell the Wii. Instead of trying to understand why the Wii is so successful (hint: it's what the customers want), they make up the reason that it must be all those "casual games" and bombard the Nintendo console with cheaply made games which most of the time fail (otherwise they wouldn't complain that third party games don't sell on the Wii).

But obviously those who buy the Wii aren't worthy customers and fail to see the "art" that videogames are becoming. There's no prestige in making Wii games. So let's just continue to develop more HD games which are appreciated by those people who understand what gaming is all about. Gaming journalists are obviously a part of those people as the nominations for the Game Of The Year awards on pretty much every gaming website showed. It's pretty obvious that sales don't matter in these awards (or else we would see more Wii games being nominated), but if it were about critical acclaim or production values, SSBB should have gotten plenty of nominations for GotY, yet it was absent from most lists. Just goes to show that there really is no prestige in developing for the little white box.

This generation is polarizing with two very different philosphies: On one side we have "next gen" (360, PS3), on the other side we have "new gen" (Wii). While the former focus on cutting edge technology and more sophisticated games, the latter focuses on user experience and accessibilty. Only one side has been successful, the customers clearly chose "new gen". Now some of you might say: "But 360+PS3 have a higher marketshare than the Wii.". Sure, but how did "next gen" get there?

There's the 360's one year head start (since the Wii's launch, the Nintendo system outsold the HD consoles combined) which is a small factor. The biggest driver for "next gen" was that the hardware was sold at a huge loss. If you were to tally up the profits/losses of the Wii, 360 and PS3 (hardware+software for each) and compare "next gen" to "new gen", the difference would be about $10 billion.

The Wii can be a goldmine, it brought in a lot of new people and interest for videogames is bigger than ever before. So far it's mainly Nintendo who is profiting in big ways from it which comes as no surprise as it's them who are releasing the most quality games for the console. Third parties are leaving a lot of money on the table by making halfassed games and missing the oppurtunity to build brands which of course would require them to put their first string teams on Wii games.

Conclusion: A lot of third parties care more about prestige and creating "art" than doing actual business which would require them to rethink their strategy and actually put effort in their Wii games which is what the customers want (or else they wouldn't buy so many Nintendo games). This doesn't mean that HD games should stop being made, but the current way of putting all money and talent into them and giving the Wii only spinoffs and mediocre games is clearly the wrong strategy, short term and long term.

It makes perfect sense.™

 

Just one issue with this argument.

The developers most famous for making games they enjoy and like to play are Blizzard, they even hire gamers to make their games. It turns out the rest of the world shares the taste of those developers...

PS : Third party don't care about art, fact is for the best developers it is considered more prestigious developing for HD consoles as the coding can get more challenging whereas aside from the remote, when coding with the Wii you don't do things a lot differently than you were doing last gen and it's not considered cutting edge by the developers themselves.

And those developers are the real core of the good studios and they do not want to loose them..